Tuesday, 3 January 2017

we drink, we sing on the state we're in...

One of my Christmas presents this year was a ticket to go and watch Wolves (my team) playing Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on Bank Holiday Monday, 2nd January. In spite of the lingering suspicion that really this was just a ploy by my Sheffield Wednesday supporting friend to have someone to accompany him to the game on a grim January day, I decided to embrace the opportunity to spend some quality time with someone I don't see anything like enough of during the year.

The plan was to leave early enough to have the time to have a nice lunch in my friend's favourite cafe by the ground. Get your timings wrong, and you won't be able to get a seat, so a prompt departure was essential. We left Nottingham a little after 11am, but somewhere on the M1, at the point where the road splits for Meadowhall, traffic suddenly ground to a halt. For the next 30 minutes or so, we made very little progress at all and tried not to get annoyed at some of the idiot drivers who let their impatience get the better of them and spend their time trying to push their way through the traffic. We had plenty of time, but the cafe was starting to look optimistic.

I have a general philosophy when I'm stuck in traffic that, no matter how inconvenient it might seem for me, there's probably someone up ahead who is having a much worse day than me. And so it proved.

After a little while, we could see the lights of the emergency vehicles ahead, and as we filtered into a single lane of traffic, we saw that there were a couple of fire engines and police cars, but apparently no ambulances on site. There had been a collision between a car and a reasonably large camper van and, as we drew closer, we could see that the front seats of the car contained two bodies, partially covered by plastic sheeting that had slipped down a bit and was sitting on their chests. Presumably, they were corpses and the ambulances attending the scene had taken away anyone who still needed medical attention.

It was a sobering sight, to say the least. As we headed on north towards the ground, it was impossible not to think that those two people had got up this morning, chatted about when they needed to set off in order to reach their destination and then headed up the motorway later on that morning.... exactly the same as us and exactly the same as every other car on the road. They were never going to reach their destination and, for the people close to them, 2017 has got off to the worst possible start.

We didn't get a seat in the cafe, and were forced to have an (excellent) tray of Sheffield fish cake, chips, gravy and scraps before enduring a fairly uneventful 0-0 draw on a cold afternoon in early January. But you know what? We'd both been given a fairly hefty dose of perspective that morning.

3 comments:

"One of my Christmas presents this year was a ticket to go and watch Wolves (my team) playing Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough on Bank Holiday Monday, 2nd January."

That is one of the most confusing sentences I've ever read. Had to read it twice to figure it out.

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Your post reminds me of something that happened back in 1989.

My brother and I were driving to the house of a friend of his for Christmas dinner, on Christmas day. It was about 5pm, so the sun was setting. We were travelling west, so the sun was in the perfect spot to blind us. The road we were on was curving to the right around Texas Stadium (where the Dallas Cowboys used to play). I was in the left lane, and an old guy in a land yacht was in the right lane. I saw up ahead that there was a disabled pickup truck on the right shoulder, but partially in the right lane. I eased off the gas to allow more space for the land yacht to move over, and kept waiting for him to do so. He never did. He slammed into the back left corner of the pickup. I had to perform evasive maneuvers to avoid colliding with the car. My brother got a front-row view of the action as we passed by.

We pulled over, and ran back to offer assistance, although I didn't know what we would have been able to do. There had been a man standing next to the right side of the pickup. He was lying on the ground, and obviously had sustained some trauma. The bed of the pickup was destroyed.

When the police and ambulances showed up, we gave our statements, then were sent on our way. The driver of the car kept asking if he could leave, but ended up getting arrested for drunk driving.

We learned later that the man who had been standing next to the truck didn't survive his injuries. The only thing that came to mind was how that family's Christmas was ruined, and how they'd have a reminder of his death every year at Christmas.

At first I interpreted it to say that one of your presents was a ticket to watch your team, the Wolves, play Sheffield at Hillsborough on Wednesday. Then I hit the Bank Holiday part and my interpretation got shot to hell.